The future’s electric, but just how close are we to mass adoption?
- Jos Siemons, Managing Consultant Smart Energy
Almost every week a car manufacturer launches a new
electric car. A recent automobile show in Frankfurt even
dedicated a whole hall to the non-fuel based vehicles
and yet sales of electric cars are sluggish at best in the
passenger car market.
At present road transport depends on oil – more than
99 per cent of vehicles are currently powered by petrol
or diesel. If we couldn’t travel by road, our lives would
disintegrate. We couldn’t deliver goods, get to work, see
friends, go to events and entertainments. Some people
believe that we have about 50 years of oil left. Others think
that oil production has peaked and we’re already on the
fast track to empty. It’s clear something has got to change.
The European Union is investing in this area. Many of
Europe’s electric vehicle projects are supported by the
European Union itself with electromobility featuring in the
Green Car Initiative that has been included in the European
Economic Recovery Plan. Around €50 million has been set
aside by the Directorate-General for Mobility and Transport
for electric vehicles and related infrastructure.
So what is stopping us going out and buying the latest ecofriendly
car? Perhaps it’s the fact that we, as consumers,
are not yet confident that this is a product that will take off?
The fact is that developing the car is the easy part, creating
the infrastructure that surrounds it far trickier. As it stands,
the current electricity infrastructure in Europe could not
cope with electric vehicles – the load would be too great.
Pure electric vehicles and hybrids including LPG/electric
and very low emission/electric vehicles are being developed
in parallel. This will mean developing parallel infrastructures
to support them. A new fuelling infrastructure will be
needed to supply fuel cell vehicles.
There are currently hundreds of thousands of petrol
stations across Europe which could become battery
exchanges or fast charge centres. Many may also become
fuel-cell recharge centres and LPG providers. Alternatively,
petrol station sites could disappear in the long term and
exchange and/or recharge centres could be situated in
entirely new locations. Tens of thousands of charging points
must be installed and, since it will take hours to recharge
batteries using current technologies, their location will be
critical. One obvious option is to site recharging points
outside homes, but that won’t be enough. Car parks
at public transport interchanges could provide top-up
services, as could parking meters, but who provides this
infrastructure and controls pricing is a controversial subject.
But we also need to consider how these charging stations
will be supplied with electricity. Smart grids will need to be
put in place to help balance local and national supply and
demand. But this needs to be considered at a country and
European level. Micro-generation from solar panels and
other sustainable sources will feed into the local grid to help
power electric vehicles. But this is unlikely to be enough. We
can also look to develop superconductors to reduce cable
energy loss, along with substituting aluminium for copper
cables, but this would be expensive and very disruptive.
What we do know is charging an electric vehicle on a
domestic supply is the equivalent of boiling a kettle for four
to eight hours per day – that is a lot of power to generate.
Being creatures of habit, electric vehicle owners are also
likely to plug in at the same time, for instance when they
get home from work or when they arrive at the office, which
just happens to coincide with peak demand. This means
that electric vehicles will all be charging at the same time. If
each country in Europe did this, the pressure this would be
place on the energy infrastructure could be catastrophic.
At present each European country is developing its own
approach with regards to infrastructure, but what makes
more sense is to have a strategy across Europe. However,
with the current economic climate the way it is, many
are questioning where the money to roll out this type of
infrastructure will come from.
The most likely option being discussed currently is the
combination of private, semi-private and public charging
which will vary from both fast chargers and slow chargers
in the home and office. Most charge stations, it is predicted,
will not have keypads or interactive screens nor will they
have payment terminals in each station. The system will
therefore require mobile payment solutions to solve these
issues at charging stations.
It is also unlikely that all public charge stations will be
connected to each other. In several countries we will see
Interoperability systems to connect several operators to
each other. Between these central networks it is unlikely
that there will be direct connections or a single European
Interoperability system drivers or “Emobility Virtual Network
Operators” (EVNOs) who can connect through their
main charge point operator to the operators in the other
countries.
It is predicted that the most likely strategy across Europe
will be that the network of charge stations will follow the
telecoms setup whereby there will be a few large charge
point network operators in each country which will make
agreements in regards to roaming with network operators
in other countries including small operators or mobility
service operators who will deliver and sell the charge
service to EV.
In the foreseeable future, electric vehicles are likely to
dominate the landscape. Standards across Europe need
to be agreed though, as it is essential there is consistency
across the industry for everything from how charging is
connected to billing. In September, the European motor
industry went some way to achieve this by agreeing on
a common system for charging any electric car across
Europe. The ACEA, the automobile manufacturers’ trade
association, called for one type of plug to become standard
for all electric cars. Therefore enabling cars to be charged in
any country no matter where they are purchased. However
it is now up the European Union to enforce these standards
and also look to agree a strategy for implementation across
Europe.
In addition, if climate change is the main reason for
switching to electric vehicles, we will have to ensure that
the electricity powering them is not generated from fossil
fuel. Instead, we will need a network of renewables, such
as wind farms, tidal and wave barrages, solar and heat
exchangers and nuclear power stations. There are a lot
of questions that still need to be answered, but time is
running out. The move to electric vehicles has to be part
of an overall, fundamental restructuring of the European
economy. Let’s just hope that this happens before the oil
runs out.
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